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  • A great deal of ruin

    Source: Cobden Centre
    by Tim Price

    “The crowning irony of our times is that after the 20th Century revealed the essential futility and moral and economic bankruptcy of totalitarian socialism, most western governments have cheerfully embraced it.” (05/05/26)

    https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/05/a-great-deal-of-ruin/

  • America’s hate-hate affair with Iran: A collision course for the ages

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Eldar Mamedov

    “Two months after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, a tense standoff prevails. There is no active warfare, but no signs of a diplomatic breakthrough either. The war is a culmination of a 47-year trajectory which set the U.S. and Iran on this collision course. Mutual hostility was the norm since 1979, and even rare openings, such as the cooperation in a post-Taliban Afghanistan in 2002, or a landmark nuclear pact in 2015, failed to change that path to a more functional relationship.” (05/05/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-us-relations-history/

  • Can a Revolution Be Lawful?

    Source: Law & Liberty
    by Michael Lucchese

    “Strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as a positive legal right to revolution — certainly not for citizens of the United States. Though there have been various insurrections against federal authority throughout our history, only one came close to succeeding: the Southern Rebellion of 1861–65. Even as states were seceding to join the revolutionary Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln insisted that their actions were constitutionally null and void. … But while revolution may never be strictly legal, as Lincoln acknowledged, it may be necessary in order to preserve liberty and even what we might call the ‘natural law.'” [editor’s note: The southern secession was unambiguously “legal” by both omission (the Articles of Confederation declared themselves perpetual, the Constitution didn’t) and inclusion (under the 10th Amendment the power to dissolve the “union” clearly remains with the states – TLK] (05/05/26)

    https://lawliberty.org/can-a-revolution-be-lawful/

  • US Debt Crosses 100% of GDP for First Time Since 1946 — And This Time Is Different

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Romina Boccia

    “US public debt has reached 100 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) for the first time since the aftermath of World War II. Just because we have been here before, and we managed, doesn’t mean we will do so again. This time is different in important ways that are underappreciated by both policymakers and the public. In 1946, the United States emerged from a global war with high debt, but also with a young population, strong growth prospects, and a political commitment to fiscal restraint. Today, America faces the opposite: an aging population, structurally rising entitlement spending, and persistent deficits with no credible plan to rein them in.” (05/05/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/us-debt-crosses-100-of-gdp-for-first-time-since-1946-and-this-time-its-different/

  • Imperial Lies and the War in Iran

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Nolan Denaro

    “Mass deception is a cornerstone of the state’s ability to maintain total control. One of the main methods used by government to convince the population of their legitimacy is the tool of propaganda. This is nothing new, and states throughout the world have engaged in this practice for all of human history. What is new, however, is the mass awakening that is occurring in this moment of imperial decay.” (05/05/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/nolan_denaro/2026/05/04/imperial-lies-and-the-war-in-iran/

  • Government Kills the Spirit

    Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
    by Ron Paul

    “Spirit has been struggling for years. In 2022, the airline sought to get on better financial footing by merging with fellow discount airline JetBlue. The merger may have allowed for more effective competition with the dominant carriers. However, the Justice Department successfully opposed the merger in court on the grounds it would lead to more concentration in the discount airlines market. This is one of many examples of how an aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement can harm businesses and consumers.” (05/04/26)

    http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/government-kills-the-spirit

  • What Is Consciousness For?

    Source: Gideon’s Substack
    by Noah Millman

    “Richard Dawkins has come in for a lot of deserved mockery for declaring that Anthropic’s LLM Claude is conscious after futzing about with it for three days (and incidentally renaming it ‘Claudia’). But in fact, he didn’t quite declare that it was conscious. What he said was that he couldn’t see how to prove that it wasn’t conscious. ‘Claudia’ appeared to think creatively in a complex manner and to engage in introspection. If that wasn’t evidence of consciousness, he wondered, then what would be evidence? Moreover, he asked, if we assume that ‘Claudia’ is not conscious, then its behavior appears to be proof that you don’t need to be conscious to think creatively in a complex manner and to engage in introspection. If that is the case, then why are we conscious? What is consciousness for?” (05/04/26)

    https://gideons.substack.com/p/what-is-consciousness-for

  • Drug Delivery Systems

    Source: David Friedman’s Substack
    by David Friedman

    “Both the FDA and CDC pages make a point of the fact that vaping is not safe while conceding that it is less bad than smoking. That, plus the absence of numbers, made me suspect that they might be exaggerating how dangerous vaping is. If vaping is only a tenth as dangerous as smoking, if the benefit from getting one smoker to switch to vaping is as large as the benefit from persuading nine vapers to quit entirely, putting the emphasis on how unsafe vaping is instead of on how much safer it is than smoking might be counterproductive.” (05/04/26)

    https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/drug-delivery-systems

  • The Battle of Ideas Paves the Way for Radicals and Revolutionaries

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Ryan McMaken

    “The phrase ‘political opportunity’ was developed decades ago to describe the phenomenon that successful revolutionaries, reformers, and activists have long understood: that significant changes in political institutions come out of a mixture of ideology and historical conditions. Political events are not determined only by the battle of ideas, but also by ideological and political movements being present in the right place at the right time. It’s not enough for an ideology to have a ‘good argument.'” (05/04/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/battle-ideas-paves-way-radicals-and-revolutionaries

  • Super Under-Blown

    Source: Common Sense
    by Paul Jacob

    “Just 60 years ago, we were talking the end of ideology. Thirty years ago, we were talking about the end of socialism — and of history itself! — as capitalist democracies seemed triumphant after the fall of the USSR. But here it’s A.D. 2026 and we have socialist mayors in New York and Seattle and … we don’t need to argue about definitions. They call themselves socialist.” (05/04/26)

    https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/04/super-under-blown/